Canada’s Radical Supreme Court
The activist court fundamentally changing the country
The Canada of today is radically different from one generation ago. Drive through any small town and you’ll come across a cannabis store. Visit a big city and you will find homelessness and rampant drug problems, along with safe injection sites. Turn on the news and you will hear about multiple violent crimes each night. Homosexual pride flags fly from nearly every government and public building. And perhaps the most shocking, someone in your family ended his or her own life at the hands of a doctor. This is hardly the country it was just a short few years ago.
A common thread joins all the changes listed above: All were instigated by the Supreme Court of Canada. Elected officials that Canadians voted for did not enact these changes. A group of nine unelected judges willed into law these massive social changes that have swept the country. Tristan Hopper at the National Post wrote: “Canada’s top court has been on an activist streak that has begun to profoundly affect Canadian daily life.”
One of the most underreported aspects is that all of these major constitutional decisions have all been slanted to one side of the ideological spectrum. This has been a significant force pushing all of Canada to lean radically left.
It is important to understand how the most powerful judicial institution in the country came to be this way, and what that means for the fate of Canada.
Laurentian Elite Alliance
Canada operates under the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, yet the Canadian Constitution was an attempt to amalgamate the best of the English and American models. The big turning point in Canadian law came when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau repatriated the Constitution from Great Britain in 1982. Canada had to that point operated under the principle of parliamentary supremacy, in which whatever Parliament decided was law. Trudeau introduced the concept of judicial supremacy, which was a high court having final say over the law.
Trudeau battled with the provincial premiers for days, mainly over this principle. Eventually a compromise was reached: Trudeau would get his Charter of Rights and Freedoms, while the provinces got their “notwithstanding clause” that allowed them to legally override a judicial ruling. The federal government has the same power. On paper it seemed to work, but in practice is has proved to be a trap.
Supreme Court justices are appointed by the prime minister and stay in office until age 75. The legislature has no power to revoke a nomination. This automatically lends itself to the executive power building a coalition of judges in ideological alignment through appointment. The Supreme Court has no democratic oversight.
This issue has been exacerbated since Canada has had virtually no political course correction since 1967. Starting with Pierre Trudeau, the federal government has traveled in the same far-left direction, whether Liberal of Conservative. The only exception was Stephen Harper, but by that time the court was entrenched as an ally of the liberal Laurentian elite who make up the political class in Canada. Whether politician or judge, most come from the same schools in Ontario and Quebec. The liberal Laurentian alliance between the federal government and Supreme Court has been a potent vehicle for change
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https://www.thetrumpet.com/26948-canadas-radical-supreme-court.
